Quinzee

As part of my Wild Deer 1 Program with the Pine Project, I have chosen to build 6 different outdoor shelters from natural materials and spend one night in each over the next five months.  For my first project I decided to build a quinzee in the backyard and sleep in it.  A quinzee is a primitive snow shelter.  You pile up some snow, let it sit for a while, dig it out, crawl in and you’re nice a cozy for the night.  What could go wrong?

Well, to start with, I was in a bit of a time crunch as I knew that warmer weather was coming.  I had planned to build the quinzee on Friday with well below freezing temperatures for the day and night.  Unfortunately, life intervened, requiring me to pick up my 93 year old aunt from the rehab hospital, care for my son who contracted a nasty virus and fever and run numerous errands.

So Saturday it was.  I woke up early and piled the snow up in about 90 minutes.  I knew we were in for above freezing temperatures on Sunday and Monday so I figured this might be my last chance this winter to build a quinzee in the back yard this year; I went for it.

Here’s a pictorial of the steps I took to build it.

My snow pile for the quinzee.

Normally, a quinzee is 7’x 7′ x 7′ to comfortably accommodate 2 people.  The pile above is obviously not that; more like 5.5′ h x 5.5′ w x 8′ l.  Hey, but it was just for me to sleep in one night so what was the big deal.  This would work, right? Right! And anyways, I wanted some snow to build a toboggan run off the deck, like the one at the Chateau Frontenac in Quebec City, too.

Sintering Snow – Simply Scintillating

Above is the finished pile.  I left it for about 4 hours to sinter or crystallize into a solid mass before starting to dig it out and went off to build the toboggan run.

Chateau Elfreda Toboggan Run

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming after allowing the quinzee to sinter.

Measuring my wall depth template.

I grabbed some apple twig shoots from last year’s pruning for the wall thickness markers for the shelter.  My foot is about 12″ long so I made a template twig approximately 18″ long.  I used this stick to quickly break a bunch more.

It is recommended to break 25 – 40 twigs 1 foot to 2 feet long depending on the snow conditions.  Use  longer twigs for lighter snow for walls 18″ – 24″ thick and shorter twigs for heavier snow for 12″ thick walls.

The sticks are pushed into the snow pile at 1 – 2 feet apart from each other so they cover the whole area of the pile from top to bottom and all around.  These will serve as guides when digging the quinzee out from the inside to make sure your walls are an even and adequate thickness.  When you are digging the shelter out and you hit the end of a twig you know you are at your optimal wall thickness in that area.

Maybe I coulda had a few more sticks but this seemed to work.

Here’s a look from the inside.  Still a little work to do to smooth the walls to reduce water drip and make sure there is a nice round arch for good support.

I probably could have gotten away with 12″ thick walls but likely ended up with 15″ to 18″ thick walls. In the end, I could have used those inches later.  Note the raised bed of snow for insulation and adjacent trench to allow cold air to flow out.  Normally, a quinzee holds two people and the trench is built down the middle with a bed on either side. This is my adaptation for the circumstances.  Cozy but not too claustrophobic for one person; yet.

Make sure you make an air vent in the top of the shelter right into the cavity for ventilation, especially if you are lighting a candle.  I kept the stick in as a safety measure in the unlikely event of a cave in.

Beautiful fragrant balsam branches from our neigbour’s Christmas tree to keep my Thermarest off the snow.  Hmmm, starting to get a little tight in there.

The finished product!

With Christmas tree door installed!

At this point, I was feeling pretty good about things.  I had built the quinzee, a toboggan run and prepped some of my gear.  A buddy messaged that he was having an early games night and I figured I was in pretty good shape so I headed out for a quick game of Catan figuring I’d come home, have a snack, slip into my little cave with my thermarest, my double bagged sleeping bag, a headlamp, campknife, water bottle, toque and Cliff Bar.

Wrong!

By the time I got home it was dark and a freezing drizzle had started.  Okay, no big deal I thought, I can throw the tarp over the shelter in case it rains a bit, to prevent the shelter soaking up too much moisture.  The temperature was still a couple degrees below zero so I figured I was still good with quinzee integrity.  I grabbed my gear into a pack and headed out.

Tarp on and secure!  Thermarest inflated and inserted on pine boughs!  Lay the sleeping bag on the bed; lay the sleeping bag on the bed; try and stuff the sleeping bag into the shelter; keep trying to stuff the bulky double winter sleeping bag into the shelter; start getting the sleeping bag wet from contact with the walls and the freezing drizzle; try and crawl in and arrange things; increased claustrophobic feelings; try again to squish in; difficulty breathing; more thoughts about warming weather and cave in risk; change the batteries in my headlamp; pull everything out; stuff it into the pack and start digging out the shelter again in the middle of the night to create more space.  Fun?  Wow!

Now if you do the math, 5.5′ snow pile – (1.5 thick wall + 1 foot thick snow bed + 0.5 sleeping bag, thermarest, pine bough thickness) = 2.5′ high maximum (at apex) sleeping space.  Not good.  No space to maneuver into the sleeping bag, hard to roll over, sleeping bag in contact with the snow, snow falling into sleeping bag and down my back, increasingly claustrophobic.

Add to this that I had a cold and had trouble breathing when lying prone due to a stuffy nose.  This intensified the claustrophobic feelings and it was time to evacuate and re-evaluate.  Obstinately, I tried re-orienting my sleeping position with my head at the entrance but the entrance was even narrower and I was aimed downhill so even more stuffiness in my nose occurred and movement of any kind was impossible.  Even with my head almost out of the shelter, claustrophobic feelings and thoughts of a shelter collapse got the better of me at this point and some time after midnight I retired to my bed in the house muttering something about “live to fight another day”.

My final attempt to stay the night in the quinzee.

Okay, truth be told, I really did not take this seriously enough.  There was no sense of urgency as the build was in my backyard.  I was overconfident having built 2 or 3 quinzees prior to this both at home and in the bush. I was not focused on the main task and got distracted by the toboggan run project and board games with friends.  I ended up with what really was a one person emergency shelter that you would stay in if you were lost with no gear in the winter woods overnight.  I would have been better off ditching the sleeping bags and Thermarest and just sleeping on the pine boughs in my coat and snow pants. Stubbornness and reluctance to give up my original plan in the face of the reality of the situation prevented consideration of a major plan change.

In reality, a quinzee is a great shelter for extremely cold conditions.  I would say -15 C or lower.  You can get the inside of a quinzee up to 0 C when it is -40 C outside, so it can be a lifesaver.  If you are well insulated below and have a sleeping bag rated to -10 C or -20 C you are golden.  I had conditions just a couple degrees below 0 C so a quinzee was overkill when a tent or lean to would have sufficed.

I have slept in quinzees before and had no trouble with claustrophobia or thoughts of wall collapse but they were big enough to sit up in and move around a bit.  I could have licked the snow without raising my head in this build.  As long as the temperature is well below zero, a properly constructed quinzee is unlikely to have a collapse.  In fact, you can usually walk on them without causing them to collapse (and I have done so on past constructions at home and in the bush).  If you are concerned about a collapse, keep the walls to 1′ thick, especially on top, to minimize the potential amount of snow falling on you, but again, properly constructed, they are unlikely to have a catastrophic failure.

Here is a final picture of my quinzee after 5 days of temperatures above zero, including 2 days with highs of 9 C and 11 C.  No catastrophic failure, just a gradual sad sag.

I did not accomplish my goal but I did get schooled by Mother Nature once again and will try and remember the lessons I learned for my next project.  Now let’s try the toboggan run!